History
seems to be repeating itself. The events of the past two weeks have shown that
the CIA is still running a disinformation campaign against anyone who questions
the “lone-nut” theory that, according to historian David Robarge, constitutes
the agency’s “best truth.”

I
recently published an article about the delay in releasing records under the
1992 JFK Records Collections Act. In that article I explained the CIA’s play to
discredit those who question the agency’s lone-nut theory,2 and suggested that Robarge,
its historian, has told us what to look for in the documents that are still
being withheld.3

There
has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the
massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the
mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified.
No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public
interest in disclosure.

In that
article I suggested we should look for information regarding covert operations
against Cuba that would, according to Robarge, “circumstantially implicate CIA
in conspiracy theories.”4 While I doubt the existence
of a “smoking gun,” the circumstantial evidence we might look for in the
delayed files could show a correlation between Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities
in New Orleans and Mexico City in the late summer and fall of 1963 and CIA
covert operations against Cuba being run by George Joannides and David Atlee Phillips
involving anti-Castro groups such as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil
(DRE).5

I
specifically suggested that we look to files on those operations. Some of these
files are in the JFK records that are scheduled for release.

Photo: George
Joannides (left) receiving a commendation from Bobby Inman.

On
October 26, 1992, Congress passed S. 3006, with only one amendment and very
little, if any, opposition. The Senate bill, introduced by Sen. John Glenn
(D-OH), was signed the same day by President George H.W. Bush and became Public
Law 102-526, (“JFK Records Act”). Among other things the JFK Records Act
provided for the collection, preservation and eventual release of all records
related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, with minimal
exceptions.

It
mandates, in clear and unambiguous language, “[e]ach assassination
record shall be publicly disclosed in full, and available in the
Collection no later than the date that is 25 years after the date of
enactment of this Act.”

The Act
allows an exemption to this mandatory requirement only if the president
“certifies” that the release of each withheld document “is made necessary
by an identifiable harm to” either 1) military defense; 2)
intelligence operations; 3) law enforcement; or 4) the conduct of foreign
relations and “the identifiable harm is of such gravity that it outweighs
the public interest in disclosure.”6

On
November 3, NARA released some of the files that I have been waiting on. The
Excel spreadsheet listing the released files include four files referenced to
David Atlee Phillips and one file referenced to the DRE.7 Of the files referencing
Phillips, three are of an unspecified nature and one is listed as his Office of
Personnel (OP) file. The DRE file is listed as “CIA file on DRE AMSPELL
operations.”

AMSPELL
is a CIA cryptonym for DRE, the anti-Castro Cuban group that was run by George
Joannides in 1963, that had the encounter with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963,
and published the first conspiracy theory blaming Castro in their CIA-financed
newspaper in Miami on November 23, 1963. For such an active group, the file
that was released is a very thin 87 pages of which 61 are expurgated in full.

Of the
remaining 26 pages, many are largely expurgated. The Phillips files are even
worse. The three files of unspecified type may be some of his operational
files. These files are even more highly expurgated than the AMSPELL file.
Taking the 73-pages long file RIF 104-10177-10135 as an example, a full 48
pages are completely redacted and NOTHING that was released in the file has any
substantive info. For all intents and purposes, it remains withheld in full.

The file
that is listed as David Atlee Phillips’s OP file is not as heavily redacted as
the other three Phillips files, although many of the documents it contains — mainly
personnel forms — have been cleansed of any significant data. That, however, is
not the end of the story on this file.

This
release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being
applied. It also illustrates the point I have been making about what they are
covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about it. It appears our
lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community.

The file
starts with a few items of post-retirement correspondence between Phillips and
the CIA in 1975 and then proceeds chronologically backwards from his retirement
in 1975. I have not yet been able to go through the 358-page file to carefully
study all the documents, but I have gone through it well enough to note that
all his fitness reports between 1956 and 1965 are missing — not redacted,
just simply not there.

Indeed,
so far as I have been able to find, there is no record whatsoever of a document
in the file dated between 1961 and 1965 — not redacted, just simply not
there.

There
has been no explanation, let alone a presidential certification, that the
massive redactions in these “released in full” documents meet any of the
mandatory exemptions that allow withholding. No identifiable harm is specified.
No rationale is given as to why the secrets protected outweigh the public
interest in disclosure.

“You
represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the CIA? You’ll be gone in two
years and the CIA will still be there.”

These
files are not in compliance with the law no matter what the mainstream media
says.

They are
an in-your-face flipped bird to the American public. They basically tell us
that the CIA is saying that it doesn’t have to comply with the law of the land
and that it will not tell us its secrets and that there is nothing we can do about
it.

I’ve
been here before. It was in a small room in CIA Headquarters in late 1978. I
had been fighting to see a file generated by the CIA debriefing of its hired
mafioso Johnny Roselli. Scott Breckinridge and George Joannides, CIA liaisons
with the HSCA, had just handed me a highly redacted file that violated the
HSCA/CIA Memorandum of Understanding mandating unexpurgated access by HSCA to
CIA files.

They
stood by, grinning, as they watched my reaction upon opening the file to find
it largely expurgated. They were grinning so hard because they knew they had
waited out the HSCA and there was nothing I could do about it.

The
Angleton strategy still worked.

It is
still working today.

PHOTOGRAPHIC
3 – JJ ANGLETON

This
release not only demonstrates that the Angleton strategy is still being
applied; it also illustrates the point I have been making about what they are
covering up. There may well be nothing we can do about it.

It
appears our lawmakers are spineless in the face of the intelligence community.
Joseph Burkholder Smith, a retired CIA officer, told me and fellow investigator
Gaeton Fonzi in 1978, “You represent Congress. What the f*** is that to the
CIA? You’ll be gone in two years and the CIA will still be there.”

I also
encourage you to not take this insult to your intelligence and ability to
govern yourselves without reaction. Refuse to accept the cancer of secrecy that
destroys our liberty and ability to govern ourselves.

Get
involved. Get informed. Stay informed.

To
paraphrase that to fit the situation in which we now find ourselves: “You are
the people that Congress supposedly represents. What’s that to the CIA? You’ll
forget about it in a few weeks or so.”

But I
won’t.

HARDWAY
LETTER TO HIS SENATOR

I wrote
a letter to my senator, West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, on November 3
before I saw the travesty that was the day’s release of JFK documents by NARA.
Probably a futile gesture, but one I had to take anyway.

Here’s
part of what I told him:

On
October 26, 2017, as I am sure you are aware, President Donald Trump, at the
request of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence community
members, disregarded the clear provisions of the law and postponed release of
ninety percent of the remaining withheld documents in the JFK Records
Collection for an additional six months. In doing this, the President made no
findings, issued no orders and certified nothing, merely issuing a statement
through the press office saying that all documents will be released “with
redactions only in the rarest of circumstances” by April 26, 2018.

The
President’s action was not only without authority in law, it was also taken in
patent violation of the clear, unambiguous and mandatory terms of a law that
your institution passed. …

The real
problem that this presents is that it is showing to the nation that the
intelligence agencies of our nation are not subject to the laws of the nation.
They are effectively above the law.

At their request, or pressure, the
President of the United States will violate the clear mandates of enacted
legislation. And, to date, the reaction of our elected representatives in
Congress seems to reinforce the fact that no one is willing to stand up to such
blatant disregard of the clear provisions of the duly enacted laws of the
nation. I understand that it is the executive branch that is charged with the
enforcement of the laws your branch enacts and, in this case, it is the executive
branch that is violating the law so there can be little realistic expectation
of enforcement from them. But this is the heart of the problem and why it is
incumbent upon the Congress to act. At a minimum there should be oversight
hearings. At a minimum the Congress should not be seen to willingly acquiesce
in executive contempt for the Legislative branch of government and the law of
the land.

This
action on the part of the intelligence community, the National Archives, and
the Executive is only the latest in a long string of actions that disregard the
provisions of the JFK Records Act that also subvert and cover up the
information related to the assassination of our 35th president. Those other
actions are beyond the present scope of this letter, but are things about which
I would be glad to speak with you if you have any interest, so I will not go
into them here.

To my
knowledge there has been no coverage or explanation of why the intelligence
community has requested this delay of the President. It was made in secret.
What reason have they given for the delay?

What kind of pressure have they
brought to bear?

How can they force a president to so blatantly disregard the
law?

If they can do this in regard to disclosure of fifty-year-old records, in
what else can they exercise a like secret influence that corrupts the laws of
the nation? What affect does the existence and use of such secret power have on
our democracy?

If these things — not just the documents but the method of
influence — remain always secret, then how can a citizenry be sufficiently
informed so as to exercise their franchise to any real purpose?

How can we have
faith in our democracy, let alone our government, if this kind of practice is
allowed to continue unchallenged?

These are the questions that I would like to
have answered. But, to make it easier for you, I note you are in a unique
position in regard to these issues due to your membership on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence.

Are you at least going to call and press for public
hearings on any of these issues? Or are you going to join the vast majority of
our representatives and once again cower before the intelligence agencies?

Will
you stand up for your constituents’ right to participate in their government on
an informed basis?

Will you stand for holding our government to a standard of
open honesty before its citizens and against allowing the real affairs of state
to be conducted in secret and in disregard of the laws enacted by the people’s
representatives?8

The
questions I asked Manchin in that letter are even more pressing today. I don’t
know if he’ll even answer, let alone do anything. Maybe, like Sen. Chuck
Grassley (R-IA), he’ll send out an apparently frustrated tweet. Or maybe, like
the mainstream press, he’ll tout the release of the documents, hoping no one
will look to see what a travesty the “release” is because of the massive redactions.
At this point all I can do is try to tell the truth about this whole state of
affairs.

2. David Robarge, “DCI John McCone and the Assassination of President John F.
Kennedy,” Studies in Intelligence, (Vol. 57, No. 3, 09/2013), Approved for
Release and declassified, 09/29/2014, at page 20. Available at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB493/docs/intell_ebb_026.PDF. Robarge wrote: “The DCI was
complicit in keeping incendiary and diversionary issues off the commission’s
agenda and focusing it on what the Agency believed at the time was the ‘best
truth’: that Lee Harvey Oswald, for as yet undetermined motives, had acted
alone in killing John Kennedy.”

For my commentary on the CIA’s “best truth”,
see Thank You, Phil Shenon available at https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2015/10/. Note that the “best truth” was
conditioned by “at the time” leaving open the real possibility that alternative
cover stories may have to be brought to play in the event that time undermined
what the Agency considered to be the best truth for them.

3. Dan Hardway, What Were They Hiding and What Should We Look For, 30 Oct
2017, available at
https://realhillbillyviews.blogspot.com/2017/10/what-were-they-hiding-and-what-should_30.html

Join the
AARC at http://aarclibrary.org/aarc-membership/. Join CAPA at http://capa-us.org/membership/. If those who exercise the power
in this country have such blatant contempt for the law, then the time for
serious peaceful civil disobedience may be upon us. Get the word out. Don’t be
silent any longer. This is not an issue of the left or the right. Do something.
Say something. And don’t stop until you are heard.

I also
encourage you to not take this insult to your intelligence and ability to
govern yourselves without reaction. Do something. If nothing else, circulate
this article to everyone you know. Refuse to accept the cancer of secrecy that
destroys our liberty and ability to govern ourselves. Get involved. Get
informed.